An analysis of congressional health policy voting in the 1970s

This paper analyzes nine health policy votes in the U.S. House of Representatives. The votes all occurred between 1973 and 1980 and include such issues as health planning, health maintenance organizations, cost containment, and professional standards review organizations. The objective of this analysis is to examine the independent contribution of variables indigenous to health issues while controlling for party identification and ideology. The influence of health providers, measured by the effect of the number of state medical association members in each state, is significant in the findings. The state and local share of Medicaid expenses is also significant in explaining several votes. Contributions from political action committees were not important until 1979, when the rising costs of campaigns gave them more influence, and when our measures of their influence improved. By the time Congress voted in 1979 on hospital cost containment legislation, the PAC variable surpassed even the AMA variable in importance.     

Six Rather Unusual Propositions about Terrorism

The costs of terrorism very often come mostly from the fear and consequent reaction (or overreaction) it characteristically inspires (qualities stoked by the terrorism industry), not from its direct effects which are usually comparatively limited. Therefore, policies designed to deal with terrorism should focus more on reducing fear and anxiety as inexpensively as possible than on objectively reducing the rather limited dangers terrorism is likely actually to pose. Doing nothing (or at least refraining from overreacting) after a terrorist attack is not necessarily unacceptable, and, despite U. S. overreaction, the campaign against terror is generally going rather well because, no matter how much they might disagree on other issues (most notably on war in Iraq), there is a compelling incentive for states to cooperate to deal with a common problem.     

Globalisation,Legitimacy, and Pacification: The Emergence of a Global Welfare Regime

The globalisation-induced rollback of social expenditures, and the concomitant increase in inequality and unemployment in developed as well as developing countries, are leading to a crisis of legitimacy for the national capitalist state and the capitalist system as whole. It is argued that the global capitalist class will attempt to offset this crisis of legitimacy through the development of a "global welfare regime" to perform the functions that the nation-state is increasingly unable to fulfil, namely, those of pacifying populations through the handing out of material and symbolic rewards. This article will formulate a working definition of legitimacy, show that this legitimacy is being threatened by globalisation, and then present empirical support for this hypothesis of a crisis of legitimacy. Finally, it will analyse in detail the policies of the international governmental organisations that are predicted to constitute a global welfare regime, showing that they are moving to shore up the faltering stability of unregulated global capitalism.     

The Historical Origins of Tanzania's Ruling Class

This article integrates the dynamics within authoritarian elites into analysis of democratization in Sub-Saharan Africa. This variable has been excluded from nearly all analysis on the subject. Based on a comparison of three cases, this article concludes that only in cases where popular mobilization was accompanied by deep divisions within the ruling coalition did democratization ensue. The division of the authoritarian coalition in Benin and South Africa created a window of opportunity which enabled pro-democracy forces to push through democratic reforms. Furthermore, only when a majority of the authoritarian elite in South Africa favoured negotiations with the African National Congress and other anti-apartheid political organizations did the transition towards democracy in South Africa make any progress. In contrast, in the Togolese case, a united ruling coalition precluded any reform that would have challenged its political hegemony.     

How Resilient are Labour Markets to Natural Disasters? The Case of the 1998 Bangladesh Flood

Natural disasters devastate economies as they impede capital accumulation. The resilience of labour markets is crucial for the poor who rely on labour to reduce risk. We evaluate how the 1998 ‘flood of the century’ affected wages in Bangladesh. We find short-term declines in agricultural and non-agricultural wages. Agricultural workers who moved towards non-agricultural employment to cope benefitted through a lower percentage reduction in short-term wages. Endowed with human capital, salaried workers were unable to mitigate income risk. Extending the eligibility of credit access or relief programmes may preserve local businesses and their employees in the years following a flood.     

A new sensitive short pentaplex (ShoP) PCR for typing of degraded DNA

Analysis of short tandem repeat makers has become the most powerful tool for DNA typing in forensic casework analysis. Unfortunately, typing of DNA extracted from telogen shed hairs, bones buried in the soil or from paraffin-embedded, formalin-fixed tissue often reveals no results due to the degradation of DNA. The reduction in size of the target fragments by development of new primers and their combination in multiplex approaches open a new field of DNA analysis. Here we present a new sensitive short pentaplex PCR including the loci amelogenin, TH01, VWA, D3S1358 and D8S1179. Validation tests of our new method included sensitivity, mixtures, human specificity, artificial degradation of DNA by DNase I and case work analysis on a panel of different forensic samples. The detection limit was 12.5 pg of human DNA, and mixtures of 50 pg in a total of 1000 pg were clearly detectable and revealed complete profiles. Only DNA extracts of human primates displayed a few signals, whereas other animal, fungal or bacterial DNA showed no signals. Our method proved extremely valuable in the analysis of artificially degraded DNA and in forensic cases, where only poorly preserved DNA was available. This approach and other similar methods can aid in the analysis of samples where allelic drop out of larger fragments is observed. It is highly recommended to develop more of these multiplexes to improve poor quality DNA typing.